Over the past week Indonesia 's
"paper of record", Kompas, has run several front-page, above-the-fold
stories about forests and protected areas on Sumatra ,
where I'm doing my PhD fieldwork. These
articles are the result of a one-week investigation in various places across Sumatra and highlight many of the problems facing forests
and some of the challenges that must be overcome by conservationists
there. Kompas's reporting describes
social, economic, and political issues relating to forest conservation on
Sumatra (some of this reporting is based on information I gave them on
background (1)), and so I'm going to summarize their findings in this
post. Please note that this post is
pretty much all summary; I'm not including any of my own findings and am trying
to curb my natural tendency to editorialize.
As a researcher, it is nice to see the area I focus on get so much
attention, and hopefully the coverage will raise public awareness about the
plight of the forests (and the people) of Sumatra.
The Big Picture
The overall issue is that the forests of Sumatra
are disappearing at an alarming rate.
Though this has been happening for some time and has gotten a lot of
attention in various media and in the academy, the Kompas reporting really ties
everything together nicely with some good figures. They compile data for all the provinces of
Sumatra for some staggering annual rates of forest destruction: Aceh 32,156
hectares/year; North Sumatra 44,099ha/year; Riau 191,336ha/year; West Sumatra
37,391ha/year; Jambi 76,522ha/year; Bengkulu 3,337ha/year; Lampung
1,205ha/year; South Sumatra 18,875ha/year; Bangka Belitung 10,070ha/year. Now for most people, these numbers don't mean
that much. That's why I lifted the graphic
below directly from the e-version of Kompas (no I don't have permission), which
has dots of varying sizes which will give you an idea of the scale of the
problem. As everyone knows, big dots
mean big problems. To give you an idea
of how the rate relates to the actual size of the forest, according to Kompas
in Jambi (where I live) there used to be about 2.2 million hectares of forest,
but now there's only about 500,000 hectares remaining. So at a rate of 76,522 hectares of forests
destroyed per year, Jambi's forests should be history in about 6.5 years.
Why Are the Forests
Being Destroyed?
Kompas describes a number of issues that are all pretty much
interrelated, but I'm going to describe the separately.
1. Intragovernmental
conflicts. As I've described previously
in this blog, before 1999 Indonesia had a very strong central government under
President Suharto (sometimes referred to as a "dictator" or
"strongman"), but when he was deposed the new government
decentralized a lot of power and authority to the district (kabupaten) governments. National parks stayed under the central
government's authority, but production forests and other protection forests
became the responsibility of the district and provincial governments. They are supposed to enforce the rules there
and arrest people that break the law.
However, according to Kompas, the provincial officials responsible for
protecting the forests complain that they don't get enough money from the
central government to do the job. They
also say that they get no money to help guard the parks. At the same time the central government
insists that the provincial and regional governments need to do a better
job. In the words of Kompas, the
different levels of government "lob responsibility at one
another".
2. Conflicting
priorities between regional and central government. This problem is related to the first and
impacts especially on national parks.
After all the power and authority were decentralized to the district
governments, they started making their own decisions and charting their own
paths for economic development.
Previously this had all been coordinated by the central government. Now, though, there are over 400 districts,
each with its own idea of how to move into the future. On Sumatra
one of the big issues is roads and infrastructure, as I've mentioned in
previous posts. At Kerinci Seblat
National Park , for
example, there are at least 33 proposed roads which would pass through the
park. These roads currently are illegal,
but many district governments are petitioning to have the roads approved. The major problem here is that there is no
mechanism in place to consider all the roads and the same time within the same
decision making and planning framework, and so there is no way to come up with
an integrated plan for the whole area (which includes 15 different
districts). At the same time roads are
political issues, and anyone wanting to be elected has to promise to support
roads through the parks. As my friend
Barlian, who is quoted in one of the articles puts it: "Ada 33 ruas jalan tembus TNKS yang diusulkan
kepala daerah di Jambi, Bengkulu, Sumbar, dan Sumsel. Isu jalan tembus ini biasanya menjadi bulan
politik saja menjelang pemilihan kepala daerah atau pemilihan umum".
Another big problem is that the district and provincial
governments want to change the status of protection and production forests so
that they can be used for other activities.
Under Indonesian law, even though the responsibility for guarding these
areas falls to the provincial and district governments, ultimate authority over
them still rests at the national level with the Ministry of Forestry. Thus the types of activities that are legal
in these areas is circumscribed by strict regulations. The local governments would like to have more
freedom to open these areas for other uses, like oil palm plantations. For example, South
Sumatra province wants to change the status of more than 459,000
hectares (about 12% of their total forests) so they can be converted to other
uses.
3. Corruption. I have also written extensively about
corruption in this blog. Forest
resources have always been a big prize for corrupt business people and
politicians in Indonesia ,
going back to the days of the Dutch colonial regime. Kompas says that many of the problems stem
from the fact that lots of folks in the government are collecting money through
bribes and unauthorized charges (pungutan
liar, PUNGLI) to issue permits for extractive activities in protected
areas, or to turn a blind eye to illegal activities. According to Kompas, many of the encroaching
farmers (see below) are facilitated by corrupt officials that actual help
organize illegal encroachment. Moreover,
village heads and members of regional and provincial representative assemblies
get a piece of the action.
4. Lack of community
involvement in conservation area planning and management. Another one of the articles mentions that the
plans to change the designation of production and protection forests (see point
#2 above) is usually undertaken at the behest of big companies with a lot of
money to throw around. They want the
district governments to lobby for a change in status so other activities, like
mining, can be undertaken in production and protection forests. The problem is that the approval process for
big business rarely takes into consideration the needs and priorities of the
people living in the area in question.
According to Kompas, land conflicts between local communities are
increasing (I've discussed this in previous posts as well), and "in every
dispute, small communities always become the victim, suffering losses of land,
property, and even life". Moreover,
because the people are not involved in planning and management, they have no
incentive to use environmentally-friendly farming methods. There are also many cases in which protected
land is bought and sold on an informal and "black" land market, where
again it is common for corrupt officials and politicians to get a cut of the
action.
What are the Results?
This is another topic I've discussed in previous posts. Apart from the obvious, though, there are a
number of really negative impacts. One
of these is increased human-animal conflicts.
The protected areas of Sumatra are home
to lots of rare and endangered species, including the sun bear and Sumatran
tiger. These species need lots of room
to wander and find food, but the increasing forest destruction cuts into their
habitat, and so as a result there are more encounters (supposedly) between
people and animals. In one of the Kompas
articles HarimauKita ("Our Tigers", an NGO) data is cited stating
that between 1998 and 2012 there have been 560 conflicts between tigers and
people. In these conflicts 57 people
have died and 46 tigers have been killed (4).
In addition there are all sorts of direct impacts of
deforestation and other forms of forest degradation. Sumatra is pretty mountainous, and much of
the land that is protected is that way not only for species protection, but
because the slopes are so steep that if you take the trees away it will
increase erosion and undermine the stability of the slopes, resulting in
increased flooding and landslides. One
of the Kompas articles points to Aceh, citing data between 2007-2010 to come to
the conclusion that flooding and landslides are occurring with alarming
increasing frequency. In 2007 there were
46 and 12 floods and landslides, respectively.
In 2008 these increased to 170 and 37; 2009 was 213 and 56, and in 2010
there were 250 floods and 47 landslides.
So Kompas suggests that high levels of deforestation are having
immediate and critical impacts on people all over the region.
Hats off to Kompas for their in depth coverage of these
issues. There is a lot of good
information in these articles and they are a good general introduction to what
is going on with forests on the island
of Sumatra . If you'd like more information about any of
these issues, you can use the search function on the sidebar of this blog,
because I've written about most of them in the past and will continue to
discuss them in the future. And if you
happen to work for Kompas, please tell the Cincin Api expedition guys to send
me my t-shirt.
Notes
(1) I met the members
of Kompas's Cincin Api (Ring of Fire) reporting expedition one day when I was
out in the field with my assistant near Gunung Tujuh. They interviewed me on camera and I told them
all about the differences between Hawaiian volcanoes and those found in Indonesia . I also told them a little bit about my
project and findings, but I asked not to have my name linked to anything.
(2) According to the
Kompas articles, Indonesia
has a total of 43 terrestrial national parks, covering 12.3 million
hectares. 30% of this coverage is in
damaged condition.
(3) Gunung Leuser
Ecosystem is a larger area that includes the large park, Gunung Leuser
National Park , and a
significant amount of supporting area around the park, though Kompas doesn't
seem to distinguish between the two designations.
(4) Though most
sources say that animal conflicts are increasing, I have read sources and
accounts from decades ago indicating that it would not be abnormal to have 57
tiger fatalities in one year in one province alone. But remember, decades ago.
References and For
Further Reading
"Hutan
Sumatera Semakin Kritis". Kompas
4/16/12
"'Ngaku'
Miskin, Punya Lahan 100 Hektar".
Kompas 4/16/12
"Ahli Fungsi
Hutan Lahirkan Konflik". Kompas
4/17/12
"Taman
Nasional Rusak Para". Kompas 4/19/12
"Lampu
Kuning Dari Hutan Bengkulu". Kompas
4/19/12
"Kerusakan
Hutan Terabaikan". Kompas 4/20/12
"Masyarakat
Penyangga Tidak Pernah Dilibatkan".
Kompas 4/21/12
"Hutan Yang
Tersisa Pun Terus Tergerus". Kompas
4/21/12
Thank you for making people aware of this serious environmental issue. Unfortunately this is a common problem seen throughout the world. I'm appalled when I see governments like Sumatra take no consideration of the consequences imposed on the environment because of greed.
ReplyDeleteIs the Kompas “paper of record” their local newspaper? If so I am pretty amazed that they would publish so publically about government issues and corruption. It’s great to have reporters talking about real issues without bias. How great to be supported by the paper in a mutual goal of preserving these beautiful forests. Also it must feel pretty good to have been able to contribute to growing the awareness of this cause with your field research.
ReplyDeleteKompas is like the New York Times of Indonesia. As for corruption, they have a really high degree of press freedom in Indonesia, which is one of the things the budding democracy has going for it.
Delete